This book unfolds the conditions, aims and challenges of culture in Palestine today. It focuses on contemporary applied theatre, and highlights how facilitators and participants alike position these practices and their inherent promise of change.

The Good Pain? draws a vivid and dense portrait of the conditions of life and culture in the Palestinian West Bank. It shows how cultural work – Playback Theatre, Forum Theatre and Social Circus projects in particular – is tied up in paradox promises and demands to effect positive change for a society fragmented and frustrated by a decades long political status quo. The book traces the impact of applied theatre in its efforts to increase national and cultural cohesion, to mobilise solidarity within the Palestinian society as well as from an international public, and to enhance the sensitisation of participants and audiences.